I learned to stretch out a simple chore like taffy; I could orient my entire day around a meeting at the club for the junior volunteer committee. I was constantly checking the clock, counting down the hours until Richard would come home.
Shortly after my twenty-ninth birthday and the night at the club with Aunt Charlotte, I went to the grocery store to get chicken breasts for dinner.
It was almost Halloween, which had always been my favorite holiday when I’d taught the Cubs. I doubted we’d get many trick-or-treaters—we hadn’t the previous year since the houses in our neighborhood were so spread out. Still, at the market, I picked up a few bags of mini Kit Kats and M&M’s, hoping I wouldn’t eat more than I’d distribute. I also added a box of Tampax to my cart. When I accidentally turned down the aisle that held Pampers and baby food, I abruptly retreated, taking the longer route to the cash registers.
As I set the table for dinner, just two plates in a corner of the wide stretch of mahogany, loneliness pierced me. I poured myself a glass of wine and dialed Sam’s number. Richard still didn’t like it when I drank, but on a few days every month, I needed the consolation—so I made sure to brush my teeth and bury the empty bottle in the bottom of our recycling bin. Sam told me she was getting ready to go on a third date with a guy, and she actually seemed excited about him. I could picture her wiggling into her favorite jeans, the ones I no longer borrowed, and applying cherry-red lip stain.
I sipped my Chablis as I soaked in her happy chatter and suggested we get together in the city soon. Sam had only come out to see me once since the wedding. I didn’t blame her; Westchester was boring to a single woman. I made it to Manhattan more often, and I would try to meet Sam near the Learning Ladder for a late lunch.
But I’d had to postpone our last lunch because I’d caught a stomach bug, and Sam had canceled the dinner we’d scheduled before that because she’d forgotten her grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party was on the same evening.
We hadn’t seen each other in ages.
I’d vowed to stay in close contact with Sam after the wedding, but nights and weekends—Sam’s free times—were also my only chances to be with Richard.
Richard never put constraints on my schedule. Once, when he picked me up at the train station after I’d met Sam for Sunday brunch at Balthazar, he asked if I’d had fun.
“Sam is always fun,” I’d said, laughing as I told him how after we left the restaurant, we’d come across a movie scene being filmed a few blocks away, and Sam had grabbed my hand and pulled me into the crowd of extras. We’d been asked to leave, but not before she managed to grab a big bag of trail mix from the craft-services table.
Richard had laughed with me. But at dinner that night, he mentioned that he would be working late almost every evening that week.
Before we got off the phone, Sam told me to pick a time for us to get together. “Let’s drink tequila and go dancing like we used to.”
I hesitated. “Let me just check Richard’s calendar. It might be easier if I come in when he’s out of town.”
“You planning to bring a boy home?” Sam joked.
“Why only one?” I bantered, trying to change the focus, and she laughed.
I was in the kitchen a few minutes later, chopping tomatoes for a salad, when our burglar alarm began to shriek.
As promised, Richard had a sophisticated alarm system installed right before we moved into the Westchester home. It was a comfort during the days when he was at work, and especially on the nights when he traveled.
“Hello?” I called. I went into the hallway, flinching as the high-pitched warning pulsed through the air. But our heavy oak door remained shut.
Our house had four vulnerable areas, the alarm-company contractor had said, holding up an equal number of fingers to emphasize his point. The front door. The basement entrance. The big bay window in the eat-in kitchen area. And especially the double glass doors off the living room that overlooked our garden.
All of those entrances were wired. I ran to the double glass doors and glanced out. I couldn’t see anything, but it didn’t mean no one was there, wasn’t hiding in the shadows. If someone was breaking in, I’d never hear the noise over the blaring alarm. Instinctively, I bolted upstairs, still holding the butcher knife I’d been using to cut the tomatoes.
I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand, grateful I’d put it back in its charger. As I burrowed into the back of my closet, behind a row of slacks, I dialed Richard.
“Nellie? What’s wrong?”
I clutched the phone tightly as I huddled on the floor of my closet. “I think someone’s trying to break in,” I whispered.
“I can hear the alarm.” Richard’s voice was tense and urgent. “Where are you?”
“My closet,” I whispered.
“I’ll call the police. Hang on.”
I imagined him on the other line giving our address and insisting that they should hurry, that his wife was alone in the house. I knew the alarm company would alert the police, too.
Our home phone was ringing now, as well. My heart pounded, the frantic throbbing filling my ears. So many sounds—how could I know if someone stood on the other side of the closet door, twisting the knob?
“The police will be there any second,” Richard said. “And I’m already on the train, at Mount Kisco. I’ll be at the house in fifteen minutes.”
Those fifteen minutes lasted an eternity. I curled into a tighter ball and began to count, forcing myself to slowly mouth the numbers. Surely the police would come by the time I reached two hundred, I thought, remaining motionless and taking shallow breaths so that if someone came through the closet door, they might not detect my presence.
Time slowed down. I was acutely aware of every detail of my surroundings, my senses intensely heightened. I saw individual flecks of dust on the baseboards, the slight variation in the hue of the wood floor, and the tiny ripple my exhalations made in the fabric of the black slacks hanging an inch from my face.
“Hang on, baby,” Richard said as I reached 287. “I’m just getting off the train.”
That was when the police finally arrived.
The officers searched but found no sign of an intruder—nothing taken, no doors jimmied, no windows broken. I cuddled next to Richard on the sofa, sipping chamomile tea. False alarms weren’t uncommon, the police told us. Faulty wiring, animals triggering a sensor, a glitch in the system—it was probably one of those things, an officer said.
“I’m sure it was nothing,” Richard agreed. But then he hesitated and looked at the two officers. “This probably isn’t related, but when I left this morning, there was an unfamiliar truck parked at the end of our street. I figured it belonged to a landscaper or something.”
I felt my heart skip a beat.
“Did you get the license plate number?” the older officer, the one who did most of the talking, asked.
“I didn’t, but I’ll keep an eye out for it.” Richard drew me in closer. “Oh, sweetheart, you’re trembling. I promise I will never let anything happen to you, Nellie.”
“You’re sure you didn’t see anyone, though, right?” the officer asked me again.
Through the windows I watched the flashing blue and red lights revolve atop the cruisers. I closed my eyes but I could still visualize those frantic colors spinning through the darkness, pulling me back into that long-ago night when I was in senior in college.
“No. I didn’t see anyone.”
But that wasn’t completely true.
I had seen a face, but not in one of our windows. It was visible only in my memory. It belongs to someone I last encountered in Florida, someone who blames me—who wants me punished—for the cataclysmic events of that fall evening.
I had a new name. A new address. I’d even changed my phone number.
I’d always feared it wouldn’t be enough.